Recently, N. K. Jemisin delivered her Guest of Honour speech at Continuum in Australia. It is an excellent and important speech. In it, she mentions that roughly 10% of the ballots cast in the recent SFWA Presidential election went to a man who is unabashedly racist, misogynistic, and just generally hateful in an astoundingly relentless sort of way. She does this in order to talk about how important it is to not be an enabler of that kind of hatred through one’s silence.
She doesn’t name him in her speech, and more power to her. He has, however, responded to her on his blog, so I will tell you here that his name is Theodore Beale, also known as Vox Day, whom I only encourage you to google if your day is suffering from a surfeit of happiness and sunshine. Here, however, are some relevant screenshots, posted with warnings for truly vicious racism and misogyny:
Beale’s response to Jemisin’s speech was astonishing. It was astonishing not so much because it was racist and disgusting in a way to do D. W. Griffith proud, which it unequivocally is, but rather because it turned up in my Twitter feed via SFWA Authors, a Twitter account designed to automatically retweet posts from members with the appropriate hashtag. This is their stated policy:
Not every blog post is appropriate for @sfwaauthors. If a post is not about writing, or about fiction or publishing, do not mark it for inclusion in the @sfwaauthors twitter feed. Repeated violations of this policy will be grounds for removal from the feed. SFWA reserves the right to determine what posts are appropriate.
Marking blog posts for inclusion that include threats or personal attacks or obvious trolling will also be grounds for removal.
(Emphasis mine.)
I believe the act of singling out this particular post for dissemination by SFWA Authors to be an act of deliberate, malicious trolling with intent to cause embarrassment to SFWA’s officers and the organization as a whole. I further believe this act should have consequences that SFWA is in a position to deliver.
I just sent the following e-mail to Sean Williams, Overseas Regional Director of SFWA, copying the rest of the board. I urge any other SFWA members who feel the same way to contact your own regional directors and feel free to borrow any language of mine you feel is useful.
The board’s addresses are as follow, with the last five being Western Region, South Central Region, Eastern Region, and Overseas Region respectively.
president@sfwa.org, vp@sfwa.org, secretary@sfwa.org, treasurer@sfwa.org, wr@sfwa.org, scr@sfwa.org, er@sfwa.org, ca@sfwa.org, or@sfwa.org
*
Dear Sean Williams,
I am writing to you as my regional representative in SFWA, wishing to express my desire to see Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day) expelled from SFWA immediately.So far as I have read on SFWA’s website, a by-law of the organization reads as follows:
Section 10. Expulsion of Member. The officers of the Corporation may, by unanimous vote, expel any member for good and sufficient cause. In the event of such expulsion, the said member’s dues, if paid, shall be refunded on a pro rata basis. If a member so expelled is a life member, the refund shall be the life membership fee paid by the member minus $50 per year elapsed since the life membership was purchased. A member so expelled shall be reinstated upon petition of two-thirds of the active membership. The Corporation shall have no responsibility to circulate the petition.
While it is my personal feeling that the hateful, harmful, dehumanizing views expressed by Beale on his blog (about women, about religious and ethnic groups to which he does not belong, about queer people) would be “good and sufficient cause” enough to not share an organisation with him, I understand that enforcing expulsion on those grounds is problematic in the absence of an expansive organization-wide Code of Conduct.
However, Mr Beale has repeatedly and aggressively used SFWA platforms to broadcast and disseminate these views with obvious malicious intent. Most recently he has used the SFWA Authors Twitter feed — in flagrant contravention of its terms of use — to broadcast an appallingly racist screed against author N. K. Jemisin, calling her an “ignorant half-savage” and saying that “self-defense laws have been put in place to let whites defend their lives and their property from people, like her, who are half-savages engaged in attacking them.”
This last reads to me very much like a threat, especially coming from a white man to a black woman in a country where public lynchings are a matter of living memory.
I urge you to please represent my views to the rest of the officers and vote to expel a man who has behaved so execrably from our organization.
Best,
Amal El-Mohtar
The SFWA seems to have trouble setting boundaries! They should expel Beale from the organization so fast they use time travel to do it.
xo
Liz
Pingback: Carrie Cuinn | Wishing Never Changed A Damn Thing
Pingback: A glimpse at the racism lurking around science fiction | Tobias Buckell Online
Pingback: Jim C. Hines » Racist Takes Dump in SFWA Twitter Stream: News at 11
Pingback: Time for Sunlight and Dettol | Where Worlds Collide
Pingback: Oh. Dear. God. | Spider's Web
Pingback: Personal, Professional, Official? Standards of Professionalism in SFWA | The King of Elfland's Second Cousin
Pingback: Giro.org » Silence equals consent: a brief letter I sent to SFWA (or The First Officialish Thing I Did as a Member)
Pingback: SFWA woes | Bennett North
Pingback: Reconciliation: A Response To Theodore Beale | shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows
Pingback: Their Fear is Justified (or Why Speaking Out In Your Community Is Important) | Make Me a Sammich
Pingback: More fallout from the SFWA controversy | angelahighland.com
Pingback: Reconciliation within the SFF genre, one writer at a time (or finally getting around to the SWFA kerfuffle) | The Cafe in the Woods
Pingback: Fall-out from N.K. Jemisin's Continuum 9 GoH speech
Pingback: somewhat past time | Crime and the Blog of Evil
Pingback: Sexism in writing & publishing: a romance perspective | Jessa Slade
Pingback: Are You Shocked? | K. Tempest Bradford
Pingback: This Week in Racist Bullshit — Radish Reviews
Pingback: Let’s Do Equations Involving Assholes | Ferrett Steinmetz
Pingback: More SFWA Stuff
Pingback: SFWA: It gets worse… | Cora Buhlert
Pingback: Theodore Beale and how organizations get poisoned from within. | Fiction
Pingback: I Really Don’t Give a Shit About Vox Day | mostprobablystrange
Pingback: Open Letter to SFWA | Jenny's Library
Pingback: SFWA, hate speech, and standing up for what is right | Diodati L.O.D.G.E.
Pingback: I, For One, Have Had Enough | R.S.A.Garcia
Pingback: How to Listen. | The Way Forward Machine
Pingback: On SFWA: Making Bigots Unwelcome | Alex Dally MacFarlane
Pingback: You know it’s a form rejection letter— | Fraser Sherman's Blog
Pingback: Through Dangers Untold and Hardships Unnumbered - The Murverse Annex
Pingback: Jo Fletcher Books, Rod Rees, Sexism, and Systemic Failure. Part II. | Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Pingback: Jo Fletcher Books, Rod Rees, Sexism and Systemic Failure. Part IV. | Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Pingback: A Timeline of the 2013 SFWA Controversies
Pingback: Sexism, Racism and the SFWA | Jack Lusted
Pingback: Фантастичният англоезичен интернет с Александър Косулиев (Юли 2013) | Сборище на трубадури
Pingback: When my son grows up, I hope he is like his dad. If not, I hope he is like this guy. | Kelly Barnhill
Pingback: SFWA Expels Member - Science Fiction Fantasy Chronicles: forums
Pingback: Links to Chew On: The Great Library | The Undiscovered Author
Pingback: By the Numbers: An Analysis of the Reviews Deleted in the Goodreads Policy Change | Soapboxing
Pingback: Black Gate » Blog Archive » Tales From Windy City Pulp and Paper
Pingback: Hugo-nominated Vox Day: Even worse than you think | we hunted the mammoth
Pingback: A Not-So-Brief Followup on the Hugo Controversy-Fest | Mountain Was Here
Pingback: Dear John C Wright: Please stop lying. ← Rachael Acks: Sound and Nerdery
Pingback: Silence Is Not Synonymous With Uproar: A Response To John C. Wright | shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows
Pingback: An intriguing point | The "Professional" Blog of J. M. Brink
Pingback: Going through Hugo recommendations | Spacefaring, Extradimensional Happy Kittens
Pingback: Sad Puppies and the Hugo Awards | Ed Fortune
Pingback: Hugo Award nominations spark row over diversity in sci-fi | dubaidailypress
Pingback: The Hit Piece That Released the Kraken | Jason Cordova's Website
Pingback: Dragons and Puppies and Bards, Oh My! 4/9 | File 770
Pingback: Hijacking the Hugo Awards Won’t Stifle Diversity in Science Fiction – The Atlantic | Great books outlet
Pingback: Hijacking the Hugo Awards Won’t Stifle Diversity in Science Fiction – The Atlantic | Pet Supply Sale
Pingback: The Hugo Affair | POCGamer
Pingback: Right wing trolls take over the Hugo Awards | jefferly.com
Pingback: Buzz Worthy News: April 13, 2015 | Cuddlebuggery Book Blog
Pingback: How Gamergate Hijacked the Hugo Awards | VG boundaries 4
Pingback: Crisis on one Earth
Pingback: Sad Puppies' Hijacking of the Hugo Awards Won't Stifle Diversity in Science Fiction — The Atlantic
Pingback: Correction: Hugo Awards voting campaign sparks controversy | EW.com
Pingback: Science Fiction’s White Boys’ Club Strikes Back – The New Republic | Great books outlet
Pingback: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121554/2015-hugo-awards-and-history-science-fiction-culture-wars | The Today Online
Pingback: Vol. 2 / No. 25.2 — Feminist Friday: “Depressed Baby Dogs” Edition | ThisWeekInTomorrow
Pingback: Sad/Rabid Puppies Flatline in 2015 Hugo Awards » Krypton Radio
Pingback: Black Gate » Blog Archive » Camestros Felapton on The True History of the Great Puppy Kerfuffle of 2015
Pingback: Just A Reminder. | The Arts Mechanical
Pingback: N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy Is Good Stuff – pudding shot
Pingback: On Fan Reactions and Awards | Ohio Needs a Train